(The Indian Categorical has launched a brand new sequence of articles for UPSC aspirants written by seasoned writers and students on points and ideas spanning Historical past, Polity, Worldwide Relations, Artwork, Tradition and Heritage, Atmosphere, Geography, Science and Know-how, and so forth. Learn and replicate with topic consultants and increase your probability of cracking the much-coveted UPSC CSE. Within the following article, Devdutt Pattanaik, a famend author who specialises in mythology and tradition, explores the evolution of urbanisation in India.)
Broadly talking, India has undergone 5 urbanisations. The primary urbanisation was beneath the mercantile Harappans (2500-1900 BCE) within the north-western a part of India. This was an enormous civilisation, unfold over a big geography, bigger than any of the opposite contemporaneous ones in Egypt, China, and Mesopotamia.
Harappa and Mohenjodaro, the earliest cities to be found within the Harappan civilisation, are in present-day Pakistan. Nevertheless, post-independence, different websites have been excavated in India, like Rakhigarhi in Haryana, Kalibangan in Rajasthan, Dholavira, and Lothal in Gujarat. These have been regulated cities, the place entry and exit have been separate with a view to management motion.
In addition to, the cities have been organised in a grid-like construction. There was standardisation throughout Harappan cities, be it the weights and measures used or even using bricks with a uniform 1:2:4 ratio. In contrast to in Mesopotamia or Egypt, there isn’t any proof of a centralised monarchy, with a palace or temple. Neither is there any signal of wars or jail.
Mahajanapadas
The second urbanisation occurred 1,500 years after Harappa. The Aryan or Indo-European folks got here from Southern Russia, by the Oxus, bringing with them horses. This was round 1500 BCE. These have been largely males, intermarrying with the native girls, altering the make-up of the native DNA.
Over time, they moved additional east, into the Gangetic Plain. Ganga plains established commerce relations with the Indus plains and past. By 500 BCE, cities emerged.
Broadly, there have been round 16 Mahajanapadas from Gandhara in Pakistan’s Swat Valley to Mathura within the Ganga river basin to Magadha in Bihar and Malwa in Madhya Pradesh.
Like Harappa, these have been mercantile cities. Toll taxes turned essential to guard the highways. So, the massive image of the king at this level was the spoked wheel — the idea of the Chakravartin. Monastic orders like Buddhism and Jainism rose on this interval as a problem to Vedic ritualism. The monastic motion was linked to buying and selling. It’s from Buddhist literature that we discover out about this part of urbanisation.
The primary cash in India could have been minted by the Mahajanapadas of the Indo-Gangetic Plain — punch-marked cash made by service provider guilds. Across the Fifth Century CE, with the autumn of Rome — an essential buying and selling companion — and the invasion of the Hunas, the retailers misplaced their significance. Commerce fell, and the Mahajanapadas started to disintegrate.
Temple urbanisation
The third urbanisation befell after a thousand years as Temple Cities throughout South India and Southeast Asia. Right here the temple was the nerve centre of political and financial exercise, surrounded by markets, courtiers, and courtesans. After the 4th-Fifth Century, when export-led mercantile commerce fell, we noticed the rise of agriculture.
Across the time Buddhism was slowly declining, Brahmadeya or donations to Brahmins/temples began rising. The “temple company” rose with temples turning into the centre of each political energy and wealth. These temples had Brahmin monks, Kshatriya patrons, Vaishya retailers, artists, and so forth. Endogamy flourished and the caste system solidified. By the tenth Century Chola interval, we see full-blown temple urbanisation. These have been extra agricultural than mercantile.
Muslim metropolis
The fourth urbanisation is the Muslim Metropolis (Twelfth-Seventeenth Century CE), which was primarily agricultural. Whereas beforehand courtiers throughout the Mauryan Empire have been paid in cash, now, with the feudal system they have been paid by giving them a share of the village wealth.
Delhi emerged as a central metropolis and with the unfold of Sufism, Dargahs (shrines), and Pirs turned essential. The Jama Masjid turns into a central website in these cities — from the place the king’s title is talked about within the Friday prayer (khutbah), as lots congregate for prayer. That is when cities like Ahmedabad, Bidar and Gulbarga rose.
Postcolonial cities
From the Seventeenth Century onwards, the fifth urbanisation is the colonial and post-colonial cities. Portuguese colonialism, the earliest, started with Vasco da Gama’s arrival in 1498 in Kerala. They took over the coasts — from Diu and Bom Bahiya (Bombay, Mumbai) to Goa and Cochin on the West Coast, and from Masulipatnam to Mylapore (present-day Chennai) to Thoothukudi on the East Coast.
They began erecting forts — which served as army outposts and administrative centres — and constructing church buildings, cathedrals, and administrative buildings that had traditional European architectural components like domes, vaults, and arches.
The large coastal cities — Mumbai, Chennai, Calcutta, Kochi — started as fortified settlements of the colonial powers, both the Portuguese or the Dutch or the French or the British. The cities started to vary visibly when railways appeared within the nineteenth century. There are railway stations, courthouses (to ascertain the authorized system to manage), and clock towers (to mechanise the work), creating a brand new city panorama. An industrial and imperial panorama.
Publish-independence we have now the expansion of deliberate cities like Chandigarh, whose grasp plan was ready by Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier; Bhubaneswar was chosen to be the capital of Odisha in 1948, integrating the temple city into its planning and the wants of recent administration; Gandhinagar was fashioned in 1960 as a result of Gujarat wanted to have a capital after its makes an attempt to get Bombay failed.
With heavy industrialisation, a part of India’s 5 Yr Plans, industrial cities like Bhilai, Jamshedpur, and Rourkela additionally cropped up. These have been industrial however socialists, shunning monumental artwork.
Publish Learn Questions
Talk about the salient options of city planning within the Harappan civilisation.
How did Portuguese colonialism within the Seventeenth century form the city panorama of India’s coastal cities?
How did the arrival of railways within the nineteenth century rework cities into industrial and imperial hubs beneath numerous European powers?
How did India’s urbanisation evolve from the mercantile Harappan interval to the post-independence industrial cities?
(Devdutt Pattanaik is a famend mythologist who writes on artwork, tradition and heritage.)
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